![]() ![]() We want to use the study to help do that and then take best practices and come up with new innovative ideas on how to address the issue." "It's a matter of really pinpointing the severity of it. We know that there's a high level of arsenic that could be put into our air along the Wasatch Front, and we don't want that," Moore said. We've seen what happened with Owens Lake. The bill, which has passed the House, authorizes $5 million a year over five years to study 20 saline lakes in the Great Basin, with eight of those lakes prioritized.Ĭracked mud is seen on the dry lakebed of Owens Lake in Inyo County, California, on Wednesday, Aug. Geological Survey to prioritize and study saline lake systems in the Great Basin, including the Great Salt Lake. Jared Huffman, D-California, directs the U.S. Blake Moore, R-Utah, and introduced with Rep. The Saline Lake Ecosystems in the Great Basin States Program Act, sponsored by Rep. To better understand these sprawling saline lake systems in the Great Basin, a bipartisan effort is underway in Congress to launch more research. "The hope is that, with the science, we can make informed, intelligent decisions moving forward." "There are limited resources and money that go into these decisions, but those decisions will involve these lakes that affect people's livelihoods and communities," he said. There is modeling that is focused on groundwater and surface water. That concern, O'Leary added, is what is leading to a multitude of studies to better understand the hydrological challenges faced by these systems. "There is a concern for the long-term viability of these lakes." Typically the only way for water to leave is through evaporation, and that leads to the saline buildup," he said. "These lakes tend to be what are called terminal discharge points where water, either surface or groundwater, is the end of the flow path. Geological Survey Utah Water Science Center in Salt Lake City. These lakes like the Great Salt Lake, Pyramid Lake and Walker Lake are part of a system of enclosed basins, said David O'Leary, a hydrologist with the U.S. The saline lakes of the Great Basin are remnants of the ice age and are echoes of Lake Bonneville and Lake Lahontan, another large endorheic Pleistocene lake that covered modern northwestern Nevada and extended into northeastern California and southern Oregon. When the rivers start to dry up or are diverted, the lakes' levels of salinity increase. These saline lakes in the Great Basin are terminal, meaning they are fed by rivers and are a hydrologic endpoint. "These lakes are relics of the past, and they hold a lot of answers to the way Mother Earth changes," said Kyle Roerink, executive director of the Great Basin Water Network, "and I think we need to use them as a barometer about the future - where we have been and where we are now." It has lost close to half its volume, and more than 800 square miles of lakebed are now exposed, vulnerable to wind-whipped storms that spread toxic dust along the Wasatch Front. Like its "sister" lakes in the sprawling Great Basin that cover 200,000 square miles, Utah's Great Salt Lake appears to be on a collision course with nature plagued by diversions, drought and climate change. It can tell us where the Earth has been, and where it is going. SALT LAKE CITY - The Great Salt Lake is a time capsule. ![]() Editor's note: This article is published through the Great Salt Lake Collaborative, a solutions journalism initiative that partners news, education and media organizations to help inform people about the plight of the Great Salt Lake. ![]()
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